A powerful exhibition by Kingston University architecture and photography students has shed light on migration, memory and displacement through a collaboration across disciplines and lived experience.

'Encounters', hosted at Yorkton Workshops in East London from 16 - 22 June, brought together MA Photography and MA Architecture students.

Timed to coincide with Refugee Week 2025, the project was created in partnership with Counterpoints Arts and supported by Yorkton Workshops and KU Backer.

The exhibition featured photographic and moving image works within an immersive, makeshift installation.

"The whole idea was that it's not just work on the wall," explained Nana Varveropoulou, MA Photography lecturer.

She continued: "There are corridors and areas of movement. Everything is makeshift, like you would see in emergency scenarios. It was the most beautiful collaboration I have ever seen."

The exhibition emerged from a professional development module, where students were asked to respond to the theme of displacement through direct engagement with communities and charities.

Many students involved had personal or familial experiences with migration. For others, this was their first deep dive into the refugee experience.

"There was a lot of anxiety at the start," said Nana. "How do you tell the story of someone else if you don't have lived experience.

"There's also the fear of saying the wrong thing, offending people, not bein accurate. It was a difficult topic for them to do and for us to teach."

Edith Robinson, a photography student, tackled British media narratives around refugees from the perspective of food.

"The idea was to approach it as a British person with a British perspective," she said.

"There is this fear of refugees as something that's going to contaminate or pollute English culture. In terms of British culture, none of these (dishes) would have existed if it wasn't for immigration or colonialism.

"I wanted to question what are we so afraid of and to highlight the irony of that."

Shubham Kakade's work (Credit: Nana Varveropoulou)

Shubham Kakakde took a different route, tracing the story of tea from the imperial trade routes.

Kakakde highlighted the cups of tea as more than just objects, as witnesses of the hands that picked the leaves and the empires that rose and fell around them.

This year's Refugee Week theme was "Community as a Superpower", an idea with Varveropoulou said was reflected in the students' process.